“How do you protect my yard and property during a tear-off?”
Summary:
Jeremiah frames property protection as a question of the roofer's planning process. Most Washington homes allow a dumpster directly in the driveway, and the first question is whether the crew is throwing material off the edge or carrying it carefully to the dumpster. On a steep roof, material cannot be brought up and over, so his crews tarp the back side to catch material thrown down, with a ground worker moving it around to the dumpster. Where there is valuable landscaping, they set up safety equipment and tarps to protect the plants. He emphasizes planning for complex landscapes and complex roofs so nails are not left behind and nothing is damaged, along with magnetic sweeps and daily jobsite cleanups. He notes that thousands of nails come off a roof and typically end up in the gutter system, so gutters are cleaned out, and an extra magnetic sweep is done around the perimeter once the project is finished.
Answer:
Well, the biggest thing to protecting your property or your yard when hiring any roofer is what does their planning process look like when doing it? So most roofs in Washington, we can bring a dumpster directly into the driveway. And when you're removing the roof, are you just throwing it off the edge, or are you carefully taking that material, bringing it over to the dumpster, and placing it in? The biggest things when it comes to roofing are speed and efficiency. Now, if there's a significant pitch to the roof, we're not going to be able to tear the material off here, bring it up and over and into the dumpster. So we're typically going to use a tarp on the back side of the roof to throw the material down onto, and then there's a ground guy that's taking that material around to the dumpster. We'll set up, if they have a beautiful landscape, proper safety equipment, tarps, so they're not going to affect any of those valuable plants to them, and we'll make sure that the material is brought around to the dumpster. The other key factor with that is proper planning. If we know we're dealing with a complex landscape, complex roof, how are we going to set this up properly so we're not leaving nails around, we're not damaging any of the landscape? Are we doing a magnetic sweep when we're finished with the project? Are we doing daily jobsite cleanups? Those are all key factors to making sure that nothing's damaged around the property and everything is filtered or directed towards a dumpster. That dumpster placement is key. When we're removing the roof, are we taking everything from the roof and putting it in the dumpster, or are we just allowing everything to fall off around the outside? All that debris, all the granules, all the nails, there are thousands of nails that are coming off the roof. Typically they're going to end up in the gutter. Are you going to go around and clean out the gutter system? Yes, you're going to do that. But also as they fall off the side, we'll do an extra magnetic sweep around the perimeter. Thousands of nails, they're going to end up all over the place, but the important part is that we have the proper equipment to go around and do a magnetic sweep around the perimeter once we're finished.